Quotes About Coping

All of us are grieving something. But while we are, we're putting one foot in front of the other. We're waking up to see another day. We're pushing through uncertainty, even if we can't yet see the light at the end of the tunnel. We are battered and broken, but we're all small miracles.

How do you do it? Do what? All of it. You know. Go to class and practice. Make it through the day. Act like ... like none if it mattered. Jason swore beneath his breath and pulled the car over. Then he reached across the seat and brushed his thumb over her cheek; until then, she hadn't been aware she was crying. Trix, he sighed, it mattered.

In the real world, you can't just turn a page and feel better.

We isolated ourselves, because it hurt less.

He shrugged. 'I think grief is like a really ugly couch. It never goes away. You can decorate around it; you can slap a doily on top of it; you can push it to the corner of the room--but eventually, you learn to live with it.' Somehow, I thought, elephants had taken it a step further. They didn't grimace every time they entered the room and saw that couch. They said, 'remember how many good memories we had here?' And they sat, for just a little while, before moving elsewhere.

You could stop expecting the most awful thing to happen, because it already had.

think grief is like a really ugly couch. It never goes away. You can decorate around it; you can slap a doily on top of it; you can push it to the corner of the room—but eventually, you learn to live with it.

There were entire days where I did nothing but cry; others where I felt like I'd swallowed a lead plate; some more where I worked really hard at going through the motions of getting dressed and making my bed and studying my vocab words because it was easier than doing anything else.

On the second Thursday of the month, Mrs. Dombrowski brings her dead husband to our therapy group.

If you hurt, cry. If you rage, strike out. If you hope, get ready for a disappointment.

people who didn't talk about their problems got to pretend they didn't have any. People who discussed what was wrong, on the other hand, fought and ached and felt miserable.

Jack could feel the fissures beginning even now, the hard shell he'd promised to keep in place so that no one, ever, would get close enough to hurt him again.

The thing that's important to remember about PTSD is that a traumatic event affects different people differently.

Amnesia was one way for the mind to protect itself from reliving something that would otherwise break you apart.

But let's be real. When you've already failed at killing yourself, anything else you might screw up seems minor.

I have always envied people who believe strongly in religion, people who could face a tragedy by praying and know that it would be all right.

That…sucks." I shrug. "It is what it is," I tell her. "The point is, if someone abandons you, it may be less about you and more about them.

Bad things happen to good people every day." —

not for the first time I think that someone's enterprising idea of therapy is another person's frustrated hell.

I think grief is like a really ugly couch. It never goes away. You can decorate around it; you can slap a doily on top of it; you can push it to the corner of the room—but eventually, you learn to live with it." Somehow

Josie started being able to sleep through the night again, instead of waking up screaming. Part of going back to normal meant erasing the boundaries of what was abnormal, and within a few months, the way Alex had felt on 9/11 was slowly forgotten, like a tide washing out a message she'd once scrawled on the sand.

How do you do it? I ask softly, and I'm no longer asking just about her and Josef but about myself as well. How do you get up every morning and not remember?

She spent the rest of her time holding on to whatever scraps she had left.

Nobody wants to admit to this, but bad things will keep on happening. Maybe